Blue Lines
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Cassia and Ky's Contract Ceremony would not be complete without Ky's parents. In my idealistic head canon, this is how it happened.


Blue Lines

By Laura Schiller

Based on: The Matched Trilogy

Copyright: Ally Condie

"Are you sure you know where we're going?" Patrick asked, squeezing his wife's hand in the darkness of the airship's cargo hold.

It was a foolish question and he knew it; if anyone in the world knew where they were going, it was the man who had smuggled them over Society's borders almost two years ago, the man with the aquiline nose and commanding voice whom they only knew as the Pilot. But they could feel the ship turning and dipping this way and that, with no apparent intention to land, and true to form, the Pilot refused to answer. Patrick and Aida exchanged glances. They were all too used to having their lives in someone else's hands, but it never ceased to be unnerving.

Then Patrick's stomach lurched, and he knew the ship was finally landing. He clung to a satefy strap and to his happy memories – Matthew's first gurgling laugh as a baby; Aida's hair after a shower; Ky's proud grin after solving his first sort – in order not to be sick. Beside him, he could hear Aida whispering to herself: _"But I have promises to keep,/And miles to go before I sleep … "_

The ship landed with a jolt. No gliding down a runway, nothing but a sudden stop that threw them both forward. Patrick knew it must take a lot of skill to land an airship like that, but it didn't stop him feeling rattled, especially when the Pilot's deep, resonant voice rang out from the speakers before he could say a single word: "No need to thank me," he said brusquely. "I did it for the young people. I owe them a favor."

"What young people?" Patrick asked.

"Give them my congratulations," said the Pilot, in a softer tone. "And tell them … tell them I apologize for my lapse in judgement when we first met."

The hatch opened at the back of the hold, letting in a blaze of hot air and sunshine. A ramp unfolded itself for them to climb down.

"Thank you anyway," murmured Aida, smiling in the direction of the cockpit behind its door. The beautiful eyes she had passed to her son and nephew, blue in some lights and gray or green in others, sparkled hopefully as she headed down the ramp.

Patrick's heart sped up. There was only one "young person" he could think of who would make her look like that. Her intuition had always been quicker to reach things than his sorter's logic. Could it be … was it possible?

A wave of warmth rushed over him as he climbed down the ramp and into the fresh air, and it was more than just the heat of the air. He took off his silver decoy coat, which had kept him alive for so long in the chill of the north, and folded it over his arm. "I didn't dress for this," he murmured to Aida.

"Neither did I," she said, looking down at her own coat with a giddy little laugh.

They had landed in a grassy meadow at the top of the Hill in Oria City, a place barely wide enough to support the landing of the Pilot's airship. Its engines roared in their ears as it flew away, displaced air fluttering their hair and clothes. Eight people stared at Patrick and Aida with open shock: one middle-aged woman, one gangly boy soon to hit puberty, and four young adults, some of whom were unmistakably familiar. One was a woman in a cream-colored dress, with a silk rose at one shoulder and a real one in her auburn hair. The other, a tall dark man in a black uniform with golden trimmings that reminded them of the Pilot's, was –

"_Ky!_"

Aida's scream rang out just as it had that day in the Borough, but today, it was a scream of joy. Nobody tried to stop her as she ran across the grass, Patrick right behind her, their long-lost son meeting them halfway to fall into each other's arms.

They laughed and talked over each other in a breathless jumble of half-sentences, nobody knowing what to say. Ky had grown taller in these past years; the top of his head was higher than Patrick's now, or perhaps it was the way he stood, no longer bowed down by his classification or his work. His hands were no longer scalded, their grip strong and healthy. He smelled clean, and the slightest bit like engine fuel. His smile of joy came readily to his face.

But the greatest change of all was the way he looked at the girl standing next to him. "Mother, Father," he said, gesturing for her to come closer, "This is my Match, Cassia Reyes. You're just in time to witness our Contract."

Ky's Match. _There have been many changes in our country,_ the Pilot had warned them, but this took Patrick's breath away with joy. For an Aberration to be Matched, at least one of these changes must have been for the better.

"I … I'm so happy to see you," said Cassia, approaching them with a shy smile. "I can't believe it!" She laughed breathlessly, her green eyes sparkling. "After all this time, it's like a miracle … "

She held out her hand, but Patrick waved the gesture away. No formalities for his daughter-in-law, especially not at a time like this. He threw his arms around her, and without hesitation, Aida did the same.

"You'll have to tell us everything," was the first thing Aida managed to say through her tears.

"Same here," said Ky, squinting at the vapor trail of the Pilot's departing airship. "Especially if _he_'s involved."

"It can wait." The speaker was a delicate, white-haired woman whom Patrick recognized as Molly Reyes. She looked older than her years now, but her voice was bright and strong, and her smile as she welcomed her former neighbors was as kind as ever.

"Take your seats, please. I believe we have a Contract to celebrate."

The ceremony was nothing like the formal ritual Patrick remembered for his own Contract with Aida. There were no rings, no silver boxes, no Official to make a speech about the Matching system and what it meant to the Society. Only Ky and Cassia, standing hand in hand in front of their friends, speaking vows of their own creation and looking deeply into each other's eyes. Only their kiss was the same, a soft kiss on the lips, the bride standing on tiptoe, the groom's hands sliding around her waist.

They ended by sitting in a circle, passing a piece of blue chalk between them. Ky drew a web of lines along his left arm, took Cassia's right hand in his own, and traced a line from his fingers into her palm. She took the chalk and continued the lines, passing it to Molly on her left, and so on along the circle. They sang as they drew, a simple song that Patrick had never heard before, but could pick up after one hearing. _Newrose, oldrose, Queen Anne's lace._ It sounded like a lullaby, soft and slow and filled with love.

Aida's touch was achingly gentle as she traced the lifeline of Patrick's hand. He did not know this custom or where it came from, but he understood it without being told, and smiled at the young brunette woman on his other side with fatherly warmth. He barely recognized her, except as a friend of Cassia's and a former neighbor in Mapletree Borough, but today they were all connected, by lines as deep as rivers in a canyon or veins of blood. Today, at last, they were a family again.

Aida leaned her head on Patrick's shoulder, her soft black hair brushing his neck. Their nephew, their _son_ had just made a Contract, and he didn't know the story of the Match. A few minutes later and they might have been too late. Aida's quiet sniff echoed the tightness of tears in his own throat.

"I'll never forgive those people," he murmured to his wife, "For taking us away from all this."

"Shh, my darling," she whispered in reply. "It's in the past. Today belongs to the future."

As so often in the history together, she was right.


End file.
